Hello Everyone, this is one of two posts today...
The lovely Sara Emily is our host at Anything But Cute where we are celebrating Valentine's Day with a 'Grungy Love' theme.
In Sara's own words - "To celebrate St. Valentine's Day, we would like to see you make a Grungy Valentine's project for your sweetheart! It can be a card, tag, or anything else you might give a loved one to show them how much you care. Just make sure it's grungy!"
For my Sweetheart's Valentine creation I used a 6 inch square wood base (purchased from Indigo Blu), lots of paint in some of his favourite colours, some random stamping, a grungy crackled heart and some 'industrial' embellishing.
I painted the wood board with a good layer of the white gesso and once dry I added a few pieces of Tim Holtz tissue tape.
I then added some colour, not too heavy, I just lightly loaded my brush, first with Tim Holtz Distress Paint in Scattered Straw and then some Indigo Blu English Cottage acrylic paint in 'Grandma's Teacup' - this paint goes a long, long way and you only need a tiny amount.
It was a bit too blue for my liking so I added some more of the white gesso to knock back the colour a little bit. Next, I took a couple of the stamps and stamped randomly using the Indigo Blu black gesso. I still wasn't entirely happy so I got out my Andy Skinner Industrial set of stamps and I stamped randomly over the entire board, using Wendy Vecchi's Archival Ink in Watering Can. I love the way the gesso stamping comes to the fore and is slightly dimensional - and the Archival Ink stamping goes to the back. I am happy with my background now.
I gathered together some of the items I wanted to use. DecoArt Media Gesso in white, Indigo Blu Gesso (Gee-so-good) in black and my favourite background stamps, Rugged Edge by Limor Webber for Indigo Blu.
Next up is the heart embellishment. I cut a heart freehand and coated it with the Indigo Blu gesso in black. Once dry I added a coat of my favourite crackle medium - Weathered Wood by DecoArt.
Once the heart was dry I painted the heart with DecoArt Qunacridone Magenta Media Fluid Acrylic, with just a tiny drop of Paynes Grey added in to give the heart a slightly more grungy look.
As with all crackle techniques it is best to 'seal' the crackle and I used the DecoArt Ultra-Matt Varnish, it really does give a beautiful matt finish.
To grunge the heart a little more I twisted some black wire and added two lengths to my heart.
I thought the base looked a little bare so I added some cogs to two of the corners. The cogs were cut from some thick card using my new Memory Box Cog die.
To make the heart 'pop' a bit more I went all around the outside edge of the heart with a charcoal pencil and then smudged it with my finger. In real life it makes the heart look really dimensional.
To finish off I added some chit chat words by Tim Holtz.
I hope you like my grungy, masculine Valentine Project and I hope you will join us at Anything But Cute this month in our 'Grungy Love' mixed media challenge.
As I have used Indigo Blu stamps and paints I would like to enter this into Indigo Blu's latest challenge - where the theme is Anything Goes.
I would also like to enter into Countryview Crafts challenge where the theme is Make your
Own Background.
As always, thanks so much for looking, I have another project up already today - sorry for bombarding you but it is just the way it is sometimes!
Hugs, Anne xx
